# Udibo vs Better Auth

Better Auth is a free, MIT-licensed TypeScript authentication framework that
runs inside your application over your own database, with plugins for
organizations, two-factor authentication, passkeys, and SSO, and an optional
managed infrastructure that starts at $0. Udibo gives you two options: a hosted
service that operates sign-in, account recovery, MFA, abuse controls, audit
history, and email for you behind a standard OAuth 2.0 boundary, and the
`@udibo/oauth2` package for application-owned authentication built as an
OAuth2/OIDC server and client rather than a session framework. The difference
that decides most evaluations: whether you want to run authentication or have it
run for you, and if you run it, whether you want a session framework or a
protocol server.

**Checked September 7, 2026** against
[Better Auth's pricing page](https://better-auth.com/pricing) and
[documentation](https://www.better-auth.com/docs/introduction). Udibo's prices
are on its [pricing page](https://www.udibo.com/pricing).

**Udibo usage assumptions and API access reviewed October 2, 2026.** Other
vendor prices and features use the September 7 review, except the managed audit
retention and password migration details checked below.

**Managed audit retention and password migration reviewed October 2, 2026.** The
pricing page now lists seven days of audit retention on Pro. The migration notes
below check the current default password implementation; custom hash
configuration still needs its own review.

**Managed audit retention and password migration reviewed October 2, 2026.** The
pricing page now lists seven days of audit retention on Pro. The migration notes
below check the current default password implementation; custom hash
configuration still needs its own review.

## The short version

| If you need                                                              | Start with                                                          |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Authentication inside your own app and database, with no vendor          | Better Auth                                                         |
| Passkeys, SAML, or SCIM today                                            | Better Auth (passkey and SSO plugins; SCIM in its managed offering) |
| Someone else to operate sign-in, recovery, MFA, audit history, and email | Udibo Identity                                                      |
| Permissions checked per organization or per resource by a hosted service | Udibo Identity                                                      |
| To be the OAuth2/OIDC issuer for your own apps and APIs, in code you own | `@udibo/oauth2`                                                     |
| A production dependency to run yourself                                  | Better Auth; `@udibo/oauth2` is public but pre-1.0                  |

## Why teams pick Udibo over Better Auth

- **Someone else is on call.** Udibo Identity runs sign-in, account recovery,
  MFA, lockout and rate limiting, audit history, and the email it sends for you.
  With Better Auth the framework runs in your process against your database, and
  the hosting, email provider, upgrades, and incident response are yours; its
  managed infrastructure adds a dashboard, security detections, and email
  sending on top of a deployment you still operate.
- **Permissions past the organization.** Udibo lets you register the permissions
  your application interprets, attach them to roles across a tenant, inside an
  organization, or on one resource, and read the result from the token or a
  hosted check. Better Auth's organization plugin evaluates role statements
  inside your application; a role held on one specific record is yours to model.
- **A record you can take with you.** At least 90 days of audit history on every
  plan, exportable as CSV or NDJSON, plus signed webhooks with retries and
  redrive. In Better Auth, audit history is yours to build or comes from its
  managed infrastructure: 10,000 events a month with one day of retention on
  Starter, seven days and 20,000 a month then $0.0001 per event on Pro.
- **A standards boundary instead of a framework boundary.** Your application
  talks to Udibo through OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, with discovery, JWKS,
  introspection, and refresh-token rotation, and the active organization and its
  roles in the token. Use an OpenID Connect client that supports your
  application flow. Better Auth's default integration is its own session API and
  client SDK; it can also act as an identity provider through a plugin.
- **One bill instead of four line items.** Udibo's hosted price covers running
  the service, storage, and email up to the allowance, and a sender you bring is
  never billed by Udibo; it is still counted against that sender's own limit.
  Self-hosting Better Auth means hosting, a database, an email provider, and
  operations time, with the $20 Pro plan as a fifth optional line.
- **The same client for both paths.** The `@udibo/oauth2` BFF and clients talk
  to either issuer: an authorization server you host with the package, or Udibo
  Identity. Choosing app-owned authentication first does not commit you to
  rewriting the client if you later hand sign-in to the hosted service.

## Why Better Auth may still be the right choice

- **No vendor.** The framework is free and open source under the MIT license,
  and your user records live in your tables. Udibo Identity is a hosted service
  with no self-hosted edition. Its open-source part is the MIT-licensed
  `@udibo/oauth2` package it is built on, which you run inside your own
  application.
- **Plugins Udibo's hosted service does not match.** Better Auth ships a passkey
  plugin (WebAuthn and FIDO2), an SSO plugin covering OpenID Connect, OAuth2,
  and SAML 2.0, two-factor authentication with TOTP, email or phone one-time
  codes, backup codes, and trusted devices, and an admin plugin for banning and
  impersonating users. Udibo's hosted MFA is authenticator apps with recovery
  codes; hosted passkeys, SAML, and SCIM are not available.
- **Account features inside your app.** Sign-up, sign-in, and organization
  management happen in your own pages through the client SDK, with no redirect
  to a hosted page. Udibo hosts the sign-in, recovery, and MFA pages; the
  `@udibo/oauth2` package supplies optional React forms but no organizations
  model.
- **Cheap, optional managed extras.** The Starter infrastructure plan is $0 and
  Pro is $20 a month with per-event pricing past its allowances, so the managed
  layer can be added later without changing the framework.

## Pricing side by side

Better Auth's managed-plan prices were checked September 7, 2026; the audit
retention update is dated above. Udibo's pricing assumptions were reviewed
October 2. Better Auth's framework has no price; the figures in its column are
for its optional managed infrastructure. Udibo prices retained users: "A person
who returns more than 24 hours after creating their account counts once in that
UTC calendar month."

| You need                         | Udibo                                                                                              | Better Auth                                                                                                                                                                                                |
| -------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Free plan                        | 500 retained users, 25,000 hosted permission checks, 1,000 emails                                  | The framework, free and open source. Managed Starter, $0: 1 dashboard seat, 10,000 audit logs a month with 1 day retention, 1,000 security detections a month, community support                           |
| First paid plan                  | $5 a month plus usage: 5,000 users, 250,000 checks, 10,000 emails included                         | Managed Pro, $20 a month: unlimited seats, 20,000 audit logs a month then $0.0001 per event, 10,000 security detections a month then $0.001 per event, email templates and abuse protection, email support |
| Multi-factor authentication      | Included on Free: authenticator apps with recovery codes                                           | Two-factor plugin in the framework: TOTP, email or phone one-time codes, backup codes, trusted devices                                                                                                     |
| Custom roles and permissions     | Included on Free, across a tenant, an organization, or one resource                                | Organization plugin in the framework: owner, admin, and member by default, plus custom roles evaluated in your application                                                                                 |
| Organizations and members        | No cap                                                                                             | Organization plugin: no organization limit by default; 100 members per organization by default; both configurable                                                                                          |
| Remove vendor branding           | Included on Free                                                                                   | Your application; there are no vendor pages                                                                                                                                                                |
| Custom session lifetime          | Included on Free                                                                                   | Your configuration: `expiresIn` defaults to 7 days, `updateAge` to 1 day                                                                                                                                   |
| Enterprise SSO connections       | No per-connection fee for OpenID Connect providers; SAML not yet available                         | SSO plugin in the framework (OpenID Connect, OAuth2, SAML 2.0) at no charge; managed self-service SSO and directory sync on Pro: 1 connection, then $50 a month per connection                             |
| Audit or application log history | At least 90 days on every plan                                                                     | Yours to build in the framework; managed Starter 10,000 events a month with 1 day retention; Pro 20,000 a month then $0.0001 per event, 7 days retention                                                   |
| Sign-in email                    | Free: 1,000 emails. Standard: 10,000, then $1 per 1,000; your own sender is counted but not billed | Your email provider in the framework; managed Pro: $0.001 per email, $0.09 per SMS                                                                                                                         |
| Users beyond the allowance       | $3 per 1,000 retained users                                                                        | No per-user price                                                                                                                                                                                          |
| Hosted permission checks         | $10 per 1,000,000 past the allowance                                                               | No equivalent product; access control runs in your process                                                                                                                                                 |

Two worked examples, with the same assumptions on both sides:

| Scenario                                                                                       | Udibo                                                | Better Auth                                                                                                                                                                        |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Consumer app: 10,000 retained users, 5,000 sign-in emails, MFA on, your own branding           | $20 (Standard base plus 5,000 users above allowance) | $0 for the software, plus your hosting, database, and email provider; managed Pro at $20 a month is optional                                                                       |
| B2B app: 200 users, 5 organizations of 30 members, custom roles, MFA, 90 days of audit history | $0 on Free, or $5 on Standard                        | $0 for the software with the organization and two-factor plugins, plus hosting; audit history is yours to build, since managed Starter retains events for 1 day and Pro for 7 days |

Sources: [Better Auth pricing](https://better-auth.com/pricing), the
[two-factor](https://www.better-auth.com/docs/plugins/2fa),
[organization](https://www.better-auth.com/docs/plugins/organization),
[passkey](https://www.better-auth.com/docs/plugins/passkey),
[SSO](https://www.better-auth.com/docs/plugins/sso), and
[admin](https://www.better-auth.com/docs/plugins/admin) plugin pages,
[session management](https://www.better-auth.com/docs/concepts/session-management),
and Udibo's [pricing page](https://www.udibo.com/pricing). Both change; check
the vendor's current page before you decide.

## Cost at scale

Udibo's column uses retained users and Standard's published rates. Better Auth's
framework has no user meter or per-user license fee, so the same head counts do
not produce a hosted bill. Compare hosting, storage, email, optional managed
services, and the time to operate them alongside Udibo's usage estimate.

| Retained users | Udibo         | Better Auth                     |
| -------------- | ------------- | ------------------------------- |
| 1,000          | $5 (Standard) | No per-user price; your hosting |
| 10,000         | $20           | No per-user price; your hosting |
| 100,000        | About $290    | No per-user price; your hosting |
| 1,000,000      | About $2,990  | No per-user price; your hosting |

There is no crossover to find, because self-hosted software has no per-user
price. What you pay for Better Auth instead is the server it runs on, the
database that holds sessions and accounts, an email or SMS provider for codes
and resets, and the engineering time to upgrade, monitor, and respond to
incidents, with the $20 a month Pro plan as an option that adds a dashboard,
detections, and metered email rather than replacing that operating work. The
honest comparison is Udibo's hosted bill against that operating cost at your
team's size, not against zero.

## What the integration looks like

With Udibo Identity, register an application and its callback, send people to
the hosted sign-in page, and finish the authorization-code flow on your server.
Your backend holds the session and the browser gets a cookie, never a token. The
[first-login guide](https://www.udibo.com/docs/identity/get-started) walks each
checkpoint, and the
[organizations](https://www.udibo.com/docs/identity/organizations) and
[permissions](https://www.udibo.com/docs/identity/permissions) guides cover a
person with a different role in each of two organizations.

With [`@udibo/oauth2`](https://jsr.io/@udibo/oauth2), your application hosts the
authorization server and its own login. The package supplies the OAuth2/OIDC
server and clients, a backend-for-frontend with server-held tokens, and
app-owned sign-up, sign-in, password reset, email verification, passwordless,
TOTP with recovery codes, social and OpenID Connect sign-in, and imported
password-hash verification. You supply persistent stores and run the exported
contract tests against them; social sign-in is wired in your own routes by
design, because account linking is application policy.

With Better Auth, you create an auth instance over your database adapter, add
the plugins you need, mount its handler in your framework, and call its client
SDK from your pages
([Better Auth introduction](https://www.better-auth.com/docs/introduction)).
Sessions, organizations, and two-factor state live in your tables.

Neither approach removes your responsibility to protect application data on the
server. A valid session says who someone is; your backend still decides what
they may read.

## Where Udibo needs a closer look

Udibo Identity does not currently offer hosted passkeys, SAML, or SCIM, and it
hosts the sign-in pages rather than rendering components inside your app.
Customers administer tenants through the dashboard today; there is no self-serve
management API credential for a script or backend. See the
[API guide](https://www.udibo.com/docs/identity/apis#the-management-api). The
`@udibo/oauth2` package is pre-1.0, so minor releases may contain breaking
changes; it has no organizations, passkey, admin, or SSO module, and its
Resource Owner Password grant cannot enforce MFA, so leave that grant
unregistered unless a migration needs it. If your product depends on a
particular plugin behaviour, write it down and test that whole journey before
committing; a successful login alone does not establish parity.

## Moving an existing Better Auth application

Inventory database adapters, plugins, hooks, session storage, and any frontend
code calling authentication endpoints. Separate account data from application
data so a new identity boundary does not require changing every business table.
Give your own user records stable IDs and record the mapping from the old
subject to the new one; do not use email alone as an automatic account-linking
rule.

Review the configuration and version that created your passwords. Better Auth's
[default implementation](https://github.com/better-auth/utils/blob/main/src/password.ts)
stores a `<saltHex>:<keyHex>` pair, with a 16-byte salt, 64-byte key, and scrypt
at N=16384, r=16, p=1 after NFKC password normalization. Udibo's hosted verifier
accepts that format. Better Auth also supports
[custom password hashing](https://better-auth.com/docs/authentication/email-password#configuration),
so do not infer compatibility from the framework name alone. Check a sample and
its original configuration against the
[user import](https://www.udibo.com/docs/identity/user-import) guide before
planning to carry passwords across. The hosted service imports profiles and
social identities and upgrades an accepted hash on first sign-in. With the
`@udibo/oauth2` package, your application supplies its own scrypt verifier
through `@udibo/oauth2/identity/migration`; scrypt is not built into the
package. If a plugin enforces an access rule or enrollment requirement,
reproduce and test that behaviour explicitly. Two-factor enrollments,
organizations, and active sessions do not move with a profile; plan a
re-enrollment path. See
[migration planning](https://www.udibo.com/docs/identity/migrate).

**Try next:** complete
[one Udibo login](https://www.udibo.com/docs/identity/get-started), then give a
person two organizations and a different role in each. Before you have an
account, the
[agent integration brief](https://www.udibo.com/docs/identity/agents) lets your
coding assistant prepare the integration.

## Frequently asked questions

**Is Udibo cheaper than Better Auth?** Not in software cost: Better Auth is free
and Udibo's hosted service is $0 on Free, $5 a month on Standard, and $20 at
10,000 retained users. The comparison is between that bill and what self-hosting
costs you in hosting, a database, an email provider, and the time to run and
upgrade it. A team that already operates those things may find Better Auth
cheaper; a team that would rather not may not.

**Does Udibo support passkeys like Better Auth's passkey plugin?** No. Udibo's
hosted MFA is authenticator apps with recovery codes, and the `@udibo/oauth2`
package has no passkey module. Hosted passkeys, SAML, and SCIM are not available
today; Better Auth ships passkeys and SAML as plugins.

**Can I move from Better Auth to Udibo without making users re-register?**
Profiles and social identities can be imported and linked by the provider's
stable subject, and password hashes are imported with an upgrade on first
sign-in when they match a supported format; custom hashing needs review.
Two-factor enrollments, organizations, and active sessions need their own
migration steps, so plan a re-enrollment path. See
[migration planning](https://www.udibo.com/docs/identity/migrate).

**Can I use `@udibo/oauth2` the way I would use Better Auth?** Partly. The
package covers app-owned sign-up, sign-in, password reset, email verification,
passwordless, TOTP, and social sign-in, and it makes your application an
OAuth2/OIDC issuer for your own APIs. It does not ship organizations, passkeys,
an admin module, or database adapters; you supply the stores. Pick it when the
protocol boundary is the point, and Better Auth when the plugin set is.

_Last verified 2026-10-02._